Prison-Based Gerrymandering and Redistricting
Federal Judges Uphold Maryland Law Ending Prison-based gerrymandering: 2011: "On Friday, Dec 23, a federal three-judge panel rejected a lawsuit seeking to overturn Maryland's landmark 'No Representation Without Population Act' which counts incarcerated people as residents of their legal home addresses for redistricting purposes."
What Is Prison-Based Gerrymandering?
Jeff Reichert
The issue of prison-based gerrymandering has gotten a lot of ink lately around the country, so to better explain it for a wider audience, I thought I'd open up this space to one of my favorite people I met during the making of Gerrymandering: Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-reichert/what-is-prisonbased-gerry_b_704847.html
How the U.S. Prison System Makes Minority Communities Pay
By Zachary R. Dowdy
Photo illustrations by John Labbe
The New Crisis Magazine, July/August 2002, pp. 32-37.
When the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court voted to prohibit a recount of Florida ballots cast in the last presidential election, the august body of appointees helped usher George W. Bush into the presidency.
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/news/crisis_july2002.html
Prison-Based Gerrymandering (latest Statistics)
Prison Policy Initiative:
(New) Captive Constituents Prison-Based Gerrymandering and the Distortion of Our Democracy, [PDF] NAACP. July, 2010. "Prison-based gerrymandering uses people’s bodies to count against their interests."
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/research/prison-based_gerrymandering/
Fixing Prison-based Gerrrymandering After the 2010 Census: A 50 State Guide
by Peter Wagner, Aleks Kajstura, Elena Lavarreda, Christian de Ocejo, and Sheila Vennell O'Rourke, March 2010
The 2010 Census will be counting more than 2 million incarcerated people in the wrong place. The laws of most states say that a prison cell is a not a residence, but the Census Bureau assigns incarcerated people to the prison location, not their home addresses. When state and local governments use this data to draw legislative districts, they unconstitutionally enhance the weight of a vote cast in districts that contain prisons and dilute those cast in every other district. http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/50states/
National Black Caucus of State Legislators Calls for End to Prison-based Gerrymandering:
By Peter Wagner, January 6, 2011
The National Black Caucus of State Legislators just issued an important resolution calling for an end to prison-based gerrymandering. The resolution, LJE-11-03, passed at the 34th Annual Legislative Conference, calls on the Census Bureau to start counting incarcerated individuals at their addresses of residence, rather than the address of the prison, beginning with the 2020 Census. The National Black Caucus of State Legislators calls upon states to enact legislation modeled after the Delaware, Maryland, and New York laws that ended prison-based gerrymandering in those states. The resolution was sponsored by Maryland State Senator Catherine E. Pugh and Maryland Delegate Joseline Pena-Melnyk, who were also the lead sponsors of Maryland’s No Representation Without Population law that ended prison-based gerrymandering in that state.
http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/2011/01/06/nbcsl/
Census Engaged in ‘Prison-based Gerrymandering” Reports Says:
Andrew Paley, Feb. 04, 2010
The U.S. Census is set to skew political power in Illinois, again.
Reformers call the problem “prison-based gerrymandering.” It’s the census practice of counting inmates where they’re incarcerated, not where they legally reside (that’s their homes prior to arrest, according to Illinois case law dating back to the 1800s).
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=155730
Preventing Prison-Based Gerrymandering in Redistricting: What to Watch For:
Peter Wagner and Brenda Wright: Feb. 23, 2011
Prison-based gerrymandering is the practice of counting incarcerated persons as “residents” of a prison when drawing legislative districts in order to give extra influence to the districts that contain the prisons. The U.S. Constitution requires that election districts be roughly equal in size, so that everyone is represented equally in the political process. But prison-based gerrymandering distorts our democracy by artificially inflating the population numbers — and thus, the political clout — of districts with prisons, while diluting the political power of all other voters.
http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/2011/02/23/preventing/
A Dilution of Democracy: Prison-Based Gerrymandering
Prison-Based Gerrymandering.
Every ten years, we conduct a national census that endeavors to make an accurate count of every single resident of the country. ...
http://www.demos.org/pubs/prison_gerrymand_factsheet.pdf
Prison-Based Gerrymandering Creates Phantom Voters
Yana Kunichoff
Anyone who is in prison on the first of April, 2010, will remain there for the next ten years - according to the US census. When the census counts prison populations, it counts them as residents of the towns in which they are incarcerated, not the communities they left and will most likely return to.
http://www.truth-out.org/prison-based-gerrymandering-creates-phantom-voters58611
Prison-Based Gerrymandering Dilutes Blacks’ Voting Power:
Emily Badger
A new report concludes some majority-black legislative districts are penalized because of the way the census bureau counts their imprisoned residents.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/prison-based-gerrymandering-dilutes-blacks-voting-power-16880
Prisoners Of The Census In New York: Democracy On The March
By Erick Lotke
August.4, 2010
New York is the most recent state to pass new rules about how people in prison are counted in the U.S. Census. The law passed on Tuesday evening provides that for purposes of political redistricting, incarcerated persons count as residents of their places of residence prior to incarceration, not as residents at their place of incarceration.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010083103/new-york-state-and-prisoners-census-democracy-march
